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Atari answered the question of what a lone player does with a ball-and-paddle game by standing the court upright and filling the top of it with bricks. The result was a hit, heavily copied, and it left marks on computing.
Single-player arcade design took a decisive step here. Rather than needing a second person, the machine set a challenge that escalated, which meant it could take money from one player all afternoon. That structure, a solitary contest against a rising difficulty curve, became the standard arcade shape for the rest of the decade.
